Foreigners who forced female expatriate into prostitution arrested

A group of foreigners who brought an expatriate woman to Maldives and forced her into prostitution have been arrested, the Maldives Police Service said last Thursday. This is the first time that Police in Maldives has investigated such a crime.At a briefing held at the Police Headquarters, the Officer-in-Charge of the Serious and Organized Crimes Unit, Inspector Hassan Habeeb said that they had received reports that a 31-year-old expatriate woman was being forced to work as a prostitute on the 4th of this month. When they had investigated they had found that the woman had been brought to Male’ to work as a maid. They had also found out that the woman was being sent to houses in Male’ and even work sites in Hulhumale’ where expatriate workers lived, and forced to sell her body.Police said that the woman had told them that the people who had forced her into prostitution were some Bangladeshis. Habeeb said that they had so far searched three locations in Male’ and two places in Hulhumale’ in connection with the crime and arrested five men. Habeeb said that four of them were “expatriates” and that the other was a “22-year-old man”.Habeeb said that the man who was directly responsible for forcing the woman into prostitution was a Bangladeshi man named Hiran and that the Police were still searching for him. He said that Hiran had been deported for a 10 year period back in November 2006 for illegally bringing in some expatriates into Maldives. Habeeb said that they had received information that Hiran had managed to enter Maldives again using a passport in another name.